Portsmouth fans scapegoat star as damning stat emerges vs Sheffield Wednesday
Portsmouth’s bright start to the season came to a halt as they lost 2-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday.
John Mousinho’s men struggled to get out of first gear and were deservedly beaten thanks to goals from Barry Bannan and George Brown.
Portsmouth were heavy favourites to beat a Sheffield Wednesday side whose team has been ravaged by financial problems. Several first-team stars cancelled their contracts in the summer after having been paid late on multiple occasions.
As such, the home fans became vocally frustrated with their team’s performance after falling behind.
Portsmouth fans target Florian Bianchini for poor performance on the wing
Portsmouth supporters inside Fratton Park began to audibly lose their patience with Florian Bianchini as the minutes were running down in this game.
Bianchini, a loan signing from Swansea, replaced Josh Murphy on the left wing for Portsmouth, but his crossing was consistently abysmal throughout the match.
According to Sofascore, he attempted 12 crosses against Sheffield Wednesday but only two were successful. The majority of the others went floating straight into the Fratton End as Portsmouth were desperately chasing a way back into the game.
Throughout the game, Pompey fans were also sharing their frustrations with Bianchini on social media. One fan said Bianchini should “go back to Wales”, while another questioned if he’d ever put in one good cross.
Pompey fans are beginning to worry about a lack of strength in depth
It had been an encouraging start to the season for Portsmouth before this game, but the abject performance against Sheffield Wednesday appears to have soured the optimism among fans.
Many supporters are beginning to question how well Pompey can compete in the Championship if a handful of their big stars are missing.
They’ll soon find out.
- Nicolas Schmid will be missing for up to 12 weeks with a fractured hand
- Callum Lang remains unavailable after undergoing hamstring surgery
- Conor Shaughnessy limped off with a hamstring problem on Saturday.
Pompey have a tough run of fixtures over the next few weeks and they’ll need to rely on their squad players to perform a lot better than Bianchini did against Sheffield Wednesday, otherwise they could find themselves at the wrong end of the table as winter arrives.
The good news is that Murphy should be fit enough to replace Bianchini for Portsmouth’s next fixture against Ipswich.
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